Jerry Andrus has died of cancer. He was a wonderful magician and campaigning skeptic. Here's a quote, as posted on his website, something that speaks to the heart of magic and filmmaking.
"I can fool you because you're a human. You have a wonderful human mind that works no different from my human mind. Usually when we're fooled, the mind hasn't made a mistake. It's come to the wrong conclusion for the right reason."
Goodbye Jerry.
Ingmar Bergman has died.
Remember all of that nonsense in Fight Club about splicing pensies into films? You know - the bit where most geeks heard the term 'cigarette burn' for the first time and then pretended they'd known the term all along? The film promises us an erect penis, spliced in, as some act of subversion. When the 'flash cut' comes, not only is it obvious and painfully laboured, it's also a limp penis. How appropriate.
But this wouldn't have done for Bergman. Ingmar Bergman spliced an actual erect penis into his film Persona (in the opening, with the bloody lamb, the nail being driven into the hand, the spider...)
That says it all, really: Bergman offers the penis up, unannounced, but part of an incredible sequence; Fincher promises it, then never delivers.
Persona also features one of the best perversions of film time through sound and image I've ever seen/heard and , later, what is surely the most suspenseful series of close ups ever committed to celluloid in the scene with the broken glass.
Go to your copy of Persona now - and if you don't have one, buy one - then freeze frame it on the erection and screen cap it, or take a picture with a camera, and upload it to the web. A 21+ cock salute for one of the masters of cinema. Link your images in the comments here, if you wish.
Goodbye, Ingmar.
Bob Clark and his 22-year old son Ariel have been killed in a car crash in LA. The driver of the car that hit them was under the influence. And he's not dead.
Clark's best film is a toss up between A Christmas Story and Deathdream, though bits of Porky's (the must profitable Canadian film ever made), Murder By Decree and Black Christmas were noteworthy, and Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things was maybe my personal favourite. The Baby Geniuses films were really quite bad, however, but Clark was now working to put them far behind him with a new slate of projects.
One of these was a remake of Dead Things. This time he might really have nailed it.
Goodbye, Bob Clark. I know that I'll remember you every Christmas.
Freddie Francis has died. He was one of the greatest of all cinematographers. I'm very saddened by this loss to film and filmmaking.
Here's a selection of his films the cinematography of which, I believe, speaks for itself.
Sons and Lovers. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. The Innocents. Night Must Fall. The Elephant Man. Dune. Return to Oz. Clara's Heart. The Man in the Moon. School Ties. The Straight Story.
Unfortunately, he never directed photography for another film after his incredible work in The Straight Story. Goodbye, Freddie.
After a YouTube session of Betty Hutton clips this weekend, I now read, sadly, that she has died. Just days after I was surprised to read she was still alive. She was 86.
One of Betty's biggest hits was Blow a Fuse, latterly known as It's Oh So Quiet and covered by Bjork. There's the odd tip of the hat to Hutton in the Bjork promo video, but it is largely lost in the rush to reference as many musicals as possible.
Annie Get Your Gun was Hutton's big movie role, tailored specifically to her talents when Judy Garland dropped out part way into filming. Comparing the two directly - a pair of Garland numbers are on the special edition DVD - has won Hutton a whole raft of favour.
Unusually for a toplining female star of musicals, Hutton's persona was more antic than erotic, based on energy, vivaciousness and pizazz rather than the pseudo-sweet sexualisation of many of her peers. And she could be funny. Honestly and genuinely funny.
Watch the clips yourself. Let Betty's song and dance do the talking.
Ian Richardson has passed away. Courtesy of You Tube, Terry Gilliam and the Ministry of Information, I offer you a clip from Brazil in tribute.
Associated Press have confirmed that Joe Barbera, half of the Hanna-Barbera founding team, has died aged 95. Bill Hanna, his former partner in creating the Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Flintstones and Scooby-Doo series, died in 2001.
After MGM theatrical animation ceased in the 50s, Hanna and Barbera went into business together and subsequently created the majority of their recognisable characters for the medium of television. Sadly, this work was deeply inferior to the big screen glories of their early years, and for many viewers, the Hanna Barbera oeuvre contains the most easily identifiable milestones in the decline of American animation from the 60s to the 80s.
All the same, the 7-times Oscar winning Tom and Jerry shorts are sterling examples of what Hanna and Barbera could do with bigger-budgets, and I am sure these classic cartoons will not be forgotten for decades, if not longer - however dated and potentially offensive (yawn) they may come to seem to many.
Peter Boyle, probably most famous as Young Frankenstein's Monster, has died aged 71. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease.
Lately, Boyle was most often and widely seen in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, and while, in fact, I didn't love Raymond at all, Peter Boyle was certainly somebody I found very, very funny when he was lucky enough to get good material.
At the beginnings of his career, Boyle essayed a number of hard, often unsympathetic characters and, yes, he was quite quickly typecast as, at best, a curmudgeon, or worst, a cantankerous bigot. I prefer the innocent monster, cemented in Young Frankenstein, which became the flip-side of the stereotyping that clogged much of Boyle's oeuvre. You can see him in cinemas now, in the third The Santa Clause film, but to be honest, you don't have to look for long to find a more fitting tribute. Myself, I'd opt for Joe.
